


What Makes Us Rich

by flawedamythyst



Series: What Makes Us Rich [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Asexuality, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-06
Updated: 2011-02-06
Packaged: 2017-10-15 11:01:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/160179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flawedamythyst/pseuds/flawedamythyst
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock attempts an experiment and John gives something up. <i>It is not what we take up, but what we give up, that makes us rich.</i> - Henry Ward Beecher</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Makes Us Rich

It was a peaceful Sunday afternoon. Sherlock hated peaceful Sunday afternoons. There wasn't even a sniff of a case, and nothing at all to do until approximately 4.36 when John would finish the section of the paper he was on and suggest some tea.

Sherlock had been trying to keep himself entertained by surfing Wikipedia, editing incorrect entries to simply read 'Wrong!', but he could feel stagnation beginning to settle in to his brain. There was nothing to do, nothing but glaring at John and hoping he'd look up and provide some entertainment by being annoyed. He was reading some article about a war-torn, famine-struck African country though, frowning slightly as if the lives of people who were so far away mattered enough to waste emotion on them and managed to ignore Sherlock's attempts at gaining his attention.

Sherlock's glare slipped into merely observing, and he stared at him for a while, taking in every tiny detail. He was wearing odd socks, which usually signified a laundry day, but he seemed perfectly content to just sit reading rather than attempting his usual fight with the washing machine. Possibly the influence of it being a Sunday – despite being unemployed, and therefore each day being much like the others, John always became peculiarly relaxed on Sundays. He seemed happy enough now to stay in his chair all day, no sudden urges to clean or rush off to buy food, or any other of those useless things he usually wasted his time with.

Perhaps it was finally time for Sherlock to attempt the experiment that he'd been pondering over for a while now. He'd been putting it off for a number of reasons, not least of which was that if the outcome was unfavourable, it might lead to awkwardness and he'd rather gotten used to the congenial atmosphere that usually prevailed in the flat. Still, putting it off indefinitely would only lead to increasing irritation – answers were there to be found, not hidden from, and there was no guarantee that they'd be unwelcome once he had them. If the results were the ones Sherlock was hoping for, then this experiment could mark a whole new beginning for him.

And he was so stupefyingly _bored_. Something had to be done, and it was this or go blow up the toaster again, and that always annoyed John.

“I've made a deduction,” he announced.

“Is it that it's your turn to clean the bathroom?” replied John without looking up.

Sherlock ignored that. “Your jumper makes your eyes look even bluer than usual,” he said.

John looked up in surprise, then glanced down at his jumper. “Uh,” he said, clearly thrown, then he cleared his throat. “I'm not sure that deduction is up to your usual standards.”

“That was merely the observation that led to the deduction,” corrected Sherlock. He leaned forward slightly in his chair. “As good as you look in that jumper,” and that sent a faint flush of red across John's cheeks that Sherlock found absolutely fascinating, “I rather think I would infinitely prefer to see you without it, or any other clothing for that matter, and spread out on my bed.”

“I'm not touching your bed wearing anything less than a full Hazmat suit,” said John before the meaning of Sherlock's words clearly caught up with him. “Oh,” he said, blinking hard. “Ah, right.”

Sherlock waited a handful of seconds.

“Sorry,” said John, shaking his head slightly. “What? You want to-”

“I want to strip you naked and touch every inch of your skin to find out what it feels like,” clarified Sherlock for him. “I want to find out what reaction I can get from my fingers in your hair, and see if kissing you is as satisfying as I suspect it would be.”

John just stared at him and Sherlock felt an unfamiliar sense of trepidation. This moment was its own test – he'd tracked all the signs that said that John would be open to such a proposition, but it wasn't as if he never missed anything, and people could be so hard to accurately predict on these sorts of things.

“Right,” said John faintly and then set his newspaper down very deliberately. “Well, let's try that then.”

Sherlock beamed at him and stood up, crossing the room to him in a couple of fast strides. Suddenly, the prospects for entertainment this afternoon were looking up. He pulled John to his feet and kissed him, dragging him close and taking the time to feel both the texture of his jumper, rough against his fingers, and his hair, which was even softer than he'd hypothesised.

It didn't take much time after that for them to get upstairs, twined together on John's bed (“I wasn't kidding about needing a Hazmat suit to touch yours, Sherlock.”) and swiftly losing items of clothing. Sherlock poured over John's body, testing the different textures of it: the smoothness of the untanned skin on his sides, the thin texture of the hair on his chest, the uneven scarring on his shoulder. It was fascinating to see it all spread out for him, exactly as he'd thought it would be, all of his history on display for Sherlock to read at his leisure.

“Were you ten or eleven?” he asked, fingers skimming over a faded scar on his leg.

“Eleven,” said John, and Sherlock noted how uneven his breathing was. “I-”

“Fell out of a tree,” finished Sherlock, already moving on.

John let out a breathy half-laugh. “Of course you knew that,” he murmured. He reached out for Sherlock, pulling him back up from his perusal and holding him close, kissing him frantically and stroking down his back with rough hands. “Stop being such a tease,” he said, one hand fitting onto Sherlock's hip and the other travelling around further to grasp at his cock.

This was the part that Sherlock had been half-dreading, half-waiting for. He flinched away automatically, then stilled himself. It was hardly an experiment if he let himself duck out from actually experiencing it. John's hand was firm and sure on his cock, pulling with long strokes, and Sherlock forced himself to relax into it, pushing away the uncomfortable feeling skittering down his spine. This was what people did, this was _normal_ , this was what John wanted.

His body was reacting to the physical sensations in the expected manner, bypassing the part of him that was finding this oddly invasive and unwanted. He kissed John again in an attempt to distract himself from it, concentrating on the soft give of his lips and the taste of his tongue. John's breathing was coming even faster now and he breathed out Sherlock's name as if he couldn't believe that he was really there. Sherlock almost wished that he wasn't.

John tightened his hand on Sherlock's cock, sending a sparkling sensation through his body that pooled uncomfortably in the base of his stomach. Sherlock had to pull away from John's mouth to bite down hard on his own lip to stop himself from asking John to stop. _Follow this through,_ he thought fiercely. Stopping midway would ruin the experiment.

Instead, he put his own hand on John's dick, desperate to get this over with so that they could get to the part where they were just lying together instead. He replicated John's movements as best he could, trying to remember how to do it without straining his wrist.

“God,” grunted John, screwing his eyes shut. “Yes, Sherlock, yes.” Sherlock wondered if he should be speaking, but he was afraid of what would come out if he did open his mouth. _How can you actually enjoy this?_ would probably not go down too well at this point.

His breath was gasping out harshly and sweat began to gather stickily on his skin as his muscles started to tense up without his permission, everything clenching in anticipation of an orgasm. The burning in his stomach was getting stronger and stronger, taking over his ability for rational thought. He ducked his head down into the crook of John's neck, letting the scent and the warmth of his skin overwhelm his senses and hide his face as it all got too much, too out-of-control, too invasive and horrible.

He couldn't stop himself letting out a cry when he came and even to his distracted ears it sounded more like a plea for help than an expression of pleasure. John was too caught up in his own body's demands to notice though, and he came soon afterwards, his cock pulsing come out onto Sherlock's hand in a way that was more than a little revolting.

Sherlock stayed where he was for a long moment, disappointment running through him as the physical sensations of sex dissipated. He really had thought it would be different this time.

“You're heavy,” John pointed out after a while.

“I thought you said I should weigh more for my height and needed to eat more?” said Sherlock, but obligingly slid off him to one side before curling his arm around John and pulling him in close against his chest. Having gone through with the whole distasteful thing, he was going to take as much advantage as he could.

John didn't protest, twining their legs together and resting his cheek against Sherlock's skin with a happy humming noise. Sherlock could practically feel the post-coital bliss rolling off him and wondered, not for the first time, why it was that he had never felt it.

Right now, all he felt was a vague sense of disgust coupled with a desperate need for a shower that he would have given into immediately if he'd been with anyone other than John. But, then, he wouldn't have bothered trying the experiment with anyone other than John – the two previous similar experiments that he'd tried at university, one with a man and one that was even less successful with a woman, had been more than enough to show him the futility of trying again.

John let out an amused and drowsy snort. “Should have known you wouldn't even relax after sex,” he said. “How can you still be tense after that?”

It was the perfect opening, but Sherlock wasn't sure he should take it. How could he tell John that he never wanted to have sex again when it was so important to John that he'd waste time taking perfectly dull women out just for the chance of getting it? Sherlock didn't want him having sex with anyone else, after all, didn't want anyone close enough to him to discover that he fell out of a tree when he was a child, or that when he kissed he closed his eyes and held on as if falling.

If he said nothing, though, if he just pretended that everything was fine and that he'd liked this, he'd have to keep doing it again and again, and he wasn't sure he could stand lying to John about it. He took a deep breath.

“I didn't enjoy that,” he admitted.

It took a second for the words to sink in to John's pleasure-sated mind, and then he tensed up as completely as if Sherlock had dug his fingers into his war wound. “Oh,” he said, all the happiness stripped from his voice. He started to pull away, trying to wriggle out from under Sherlock's arm, and Sherlock tightened it automatically.

“I am enjoying this, though,” he said, “so I'll be very annoyed if you move.”

John stopped moving but didn't relax. “I don't understand,” he said in a confused voice, and Sherlock stifled a sigh. What else was new? “Why- If you didn't like it, then why did we, did you do it?”

“I was hoping it would be different with you,” said Sherlock softly. There was silence for a minute while John processed that.

“You don't like sex,” he said carefully.

“No,” agreed Sherlock.

“But you do like me,” continued John.

“I suspect I love you,” said Sherlock. If he was going to tell his secrets, he might as well tell all of them and get them all out in one conversation.

“Oh,” said John again, sounding completely taken aback. Sherlock carefully shifted his head to look down at John's face, but it was angled down and all he could see was his hair. The hand that he had wrapped around John's shoulders crept up to play with the tendrils of it that lay at the nape of John's neck. “Right,” said John unevenly. “So, what? You just want to....cuddle, then?”

“I like kissing as well,” said Sherlock.

“Right,” said John again, still sounding puzzled. “But not sex.” He was silent again for a moment, then couldn't keep it in any longer. “I'm sorry, how does anyone not like sex? You came, didn't you?”

“That's merely physiological,” Sherlock pointed out. “The whole thing is messy and intrusive, and your whole body is out of your control and hijacked by your libido so that you can't concentrate on anything else. It's unpleasant.”

John let out a half-laugh, which was not the reaction Sherlock had been expecting. “Of course,” he said. “Mr. Control Freak doesn't believe in acknowledging the needs of the body, not eating or sleeping or, apparently, sex.”

“At least I'm not a slave to animal desires,” snapped back Sherlock.

“You mean things like the comfort of another body in close proximity?” asked John, squeezing Sherlock's ribs to emphasise his point.

“If you're going to mock me,” started Sherlock, moving his arm from John's shoulders and preparing to sit up.

“No, no,” said John quickly, reaching up to catch Sherlock's arm and pull it back. “I'm just trying to understand.”

Sherlock allowed himself to settle again. “You won't be able to,” he said. “I know how you feel about sex. I'm not saying I won't give it to you in exchange for all the rest of it.”

John pulled away to prop himself up on his elbow and stare down at Sherlock's face. “No,” he said firmly. “How could you even think I'd want that?”

Sherlock frowned. “You wouldn't be forcing me,” he pointed out. “Weren't you the one who said relationships were about compromise?”

“This isn't the same as remembering to put body parts in sealed containers before you put them in the fridge,” protested John. “I'm not going to have sex with someone who doesn't want to.”

“You're not going to have sex with anyone else, either,” said Sherlock firmly, clutching at John's arm. “Or is this a dealbreaker, and you'd prefer to just be friends after all?” The thought made his heart clench. “I would much prefer to cope with sex than have that.”

“I don't think we've really been friends for a while,” said John slowly. He bent down and pressed a soft kiss to Sherlock's lips. “I don't want to give this up either, but there's no pleasure for me in sex with someone who isn't enjoying it.”

“You had plenty of pleasure just now,” pointed out Sherlock.

“I thought you were enjoying it,” said John, and there's something sad in his voice that makes Sherlock wonder if his experiment was a mistake after all.

 _No,_ he thought, _I had to see._

John lay his head back down on Sherlock's chest with a sigh. “We'll figure something out,” he said. “It's not as if I've never gone long periods of time without sex, after all. In the Army-”

“You were getting handjobs from Murray,” Sherlock finished for him.

John froze, then laughed wryly. “Probably best if I never find out how you knew that.”

“Possibly,” acknowledged Sherlock. “John, you're a sexual man, you-”

“And you're not,” said John. “Like you said, relationships are about compromise. This time, it's my turn.” Sherlock let out a little sigh, wondering exactly how long that would last. “And in return,” added John, “you can compromise by cleaning the bathroom.”

“I don't enjoy that either,” said Sherlock. “How is requiring me to engage in domestic service any different from letting me put up with having sex?”

“It needs to be done,” John pointed out. “And it seems I'm going to be spending rather a lot of time masturbating from now on, so I'll be too busy.”

“John,” said Sherlock in a serious voice. “This isn't going to work.”

John sighed and sat up. “It's up to me,” he said. “Don't you know I'd happily give up almost anything for you? You're not the only one who suspects they're in love, you know.”

For a moment, Sherlock was speechless, a warm thrum spreading out in his chest. He should have known that, should have been able to deduce it from John's words and actions, but somehow it had still managed to catch him by surprise. He cleared his throat unnecessarily. “Almost anything?” he repeated.

“Well, a man needs his tea,” said John. “In fact, I think it's time for some now.” He moved to the edge of the bed and started pulling his clothes back on. “Want some?”

Sherlock didn't reply immediately, too busy watching as John covered up the secrets written on his skin again, wondering how on earth he could possibly still find himself surprised by someone he knew so well. “Yes,” he said absently, noting the differences in John's hair before and after he'd pulled his jumper on. He suspected he was going to be spending the rest of his life filling his mind with such trivial data, but he found that he didn't mind at all.

He sat up and reached for his own clothes. “I'm still not going to clean the bathroom,” he said, “but I will manipulate Mycroft into paying someone to do it for us.”

John grinned at him. “That would be an acceptable compromise,” he said. Sherlock smiled back at him, putting aside his internal debate as to how long it would take John to realise that he was giving more than he was getting and start insisting on a re-negotiation, or even simply leave. For now, he had the prospect of curling up on the sofa with John and trading gentle, tea-warmed kisses. The rest could wait.


End file.
